The Utopia of Apocalypse

Utrecht University New Media Studies | Master’s thesis The Utopia of Apocalypse Anti-human exceptionalism in Shin Megami Tensei & A critique on the anthropocentric understanding of established notions of utopia in science fiction studies Title: The Utopia of Apocalypse: Anti-human exceptionalism in Shin Megami Tensei & A critique on the anthropocentric understanding of established notions of utopia in science fiction studies Date: 15 August 2012 By: Guan van Zoggel (3782611) [email protected] Student MA New Media & Digital Cultures Supervisors: Dr. Ann-Sophie Lehmann (tutor/main supervisor) Dr. Kathrin Thiele (second reader) Table of contents Abstract .................................................................................................. iii Acknowledgements ................................................................................. iv Introduction ............................................................................................ 1 What is this ‘monster’? ........................................................................... 6 Animated animals and anthropomorphism ................................. 6 Contextualising Shin Megami Tensei ............................................. 11 The monstrosity, the cyborg and the hybrid .............................. 16 How does this ‘monster’ work? ............................................................. 22 The Uncanny ................................................................................... 23 Intimate virtuality........................................................................... 29 Anti-human exceptionalism .......................................................... 34 Content of critique ................................................................................. 40 Paraspaces of the Schwarzwelt ..................................................... 43 Defamiliarisations of whose present? .......................................... 48 Conclusion ............................................................................................. 53 Works cited ............................................................................................ 56 ii Abstract This thesis serves two purposes: to consider philosophical issues through video games and to make its reader aware of the normality that is anthropocentrism or human exceptionalism. Building on the recent interest in animality in animation studies, ‚The Utopia of the Apocalypse‛ proposes a Derridean discursive ‘monster’, theorised through established ideas of monstrosities and contextualised by cyberpunk video game series Shin Megami Tensei, to challenge the established anthropocentric understandings of the concept of utopia. Guided by ontological questions about this discursive ‘monster’ – what is it? how does it work? – this thesis analyses the transgression of the human-nonhuman-machine interface in Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey through a conceptual dialogue between the uncanny and techno-intimacy. The process of reading this thesis is intended to be equal to the process domesticating a ‘monster’, making it a pet and becoming aware of anthropocentrism as a normality. Keywords: animal studies, ecofeminism, media studies, philosophy, sf studies iii Acknowledgements Although I do not know whether it is customary or even acceptable to include an acknowledgement section in a Master’s thesis, I do know I want to thank family and friends for their support throughout the writing process of this thesis. In particular I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Ann-Sophie Lehmann, especially for her open-mindedness toward my sometimes peculiar research topics, and lecturer Isabelle van Elferen for her literature recommendations which have proved to be essential for this thesis. Furthermore, I would like to thank my colleagues Sanne Albers and Mari Nakamura for their valuable feedback on the first draft. Finally, apart from thanking for sarcastically pointing out silly Dutch syntax in some of my footnotes, I ought to apologise to my partner Loraine for having her look at my back more often than my face during the writing process of this thesis. Gomen ne. Guan van Zoggel Leiden, August 2012 iv Introduction After successfully infiltrating the base where Jack’s squad had captured my fellow soldier Jimenez, I ran into what looked like a laboratory. In the centre of the room, one of Jack’s men guarded the dimly illuminated tubes with an automated machine gun. Unknown distorted voices filled the room with agony. I hid behind some crates and listened. ‚Humans< Cursed humans‛, one shouted. ‚You want my power so much you don’t mind cutting me up?‛ another yelled. I put down my gun and peeked through the crates. ‚This humiliation! I should have killed you on the spot when I met you!‛. The tubes contained demons. Some of them dismembered, others highly malformed as if they had been through a series of experiments. ‚Give them back< Give them back<‛, one of them begged. ‚My hands< My feet< Give them back to me<‛ Upon hearing this, my heart started throbbing and I stood up. ‚I’m angry, but I see now why God cursed the humans... They’re unsalvageable! Their wretched souls are stuck deep inside their bodies!‛, the demon in the most inner tube shouted. ‚That’s right! Curse me all you want. The strong demons will become new weapons, the others spare parts. Now THIS is science!‛, Jack’s soldier answered. ‚The fusion of technology and demons!‛ Realising I had snuck up behind him, he turned around and we soon thereafter emerged in combat. ‚Humans... Cursed humans...! Kill each other! Kill each other! Kill each other without end... Until you die, we shall be at your heels...‛ Not before finishing him off I realised that I was no whit better than he was. This excerpt is based on a scene halfway through the game Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (Atlus, 2010; henceforth: SJ), which was released for Nintendo DS in the United States in 2010, one year after its initial Japanese release. All aforementioned dialogues and 1 descriptions of actions are courtesy of developer and publisher Atlus; all thoughts and emotions described in the excerpt, however, are my own. It was my heart that was throbbing, only to realise that it was hypocrite of me to think that I was any better than the character on the screen. After all, it was me who had been fusing demons to give birth to stronger species to overcome my character’s weaknesses for at least thirty hours so far. It is precisely this total immersion, or presence, in a diegetic reality, rather than merely observing one without actively taking part, that makes video games so compelling (McMahan, 2003: 68-9). In order to achieve total immersion, the player has to transcend the barriers of engagement, investment and engrossment, and ultimately those of empathy and atmosphere (Brown and Cairns, 2004). Rather than focusing on how total immersion can be achieved design-wise, this thesis is concerned with the interactions between the human, the nonhuman and the machine within the diegetic reality of video games. Blending the distinctions between each subject of the aforementioned trinity – resulting in what literary critics would call a ‘monster’1 – this paper has to draw from various disciplines in order to comprehend this ‘monster’, including several media studies, science fiction (henceforth: sf) studies,2 philosophy and to some extent ecology. Ultimately, however, this theoretical ‘monster’ proves to be a useful argument or tool to not only rethink power relations among human races, but also, as this thesis is focused on, to challenge established ideas within the field of sf studies. Guided by the Derridean notion of the ‘monster’, this thesis attempts to produce ‚a discursive monster *in the first two sections+ so that the analysis [in the third section] will be a practical effect, so that people [i.e., in this case, the reader] will be forced to become aware of the history of normality‛ (1995: 386). Among the many 1 Literary critics’ thoughts on monstrosities and similar concepts will be discussed in more detail in subsection ‘The monstrosity, the cyborg and the hybrid’, p. 16. 2 In this thesis the abbreviation ‘sf’ is also used to encompass both ‘science fiction’ and ‘speculative fiction’. 2 issues posed by this thesis, the foremost question this thesis is centred around, then, is as follows: How does the discursive ‘monster’ constructed throughout this thesis force its reader to become aware of the history of normality? To answer this question, this thesis is divided into three sections, each seeking answers to questions related to the ‘monster’. The first section serves as an accessible vehicle to introduce the ‘monster’, both literally and figuratively. By drawing from the recent interest in animal studies among animation scholars, the central questions focus on the manifestation or composition of the ‘monster’: how this ‘monster’ relates to nonhuman animals (henceforth: animals), how thinkers have formulated their ideas on monsters and how one should understand, or start to understand the ‘monster’ central to this thesis. To provide an accessible entrance to understanding the ‘monster’, the first section introduces the blurring distinctions between humans and animals in Paul Wells and Thomas Lamarre’s discussions on animals, animality and anthropomorphism in animation – largely inspired by Haraway’s cyborg theory and Latour’s attempt to rethink modernity, challenging the traditional anthropocentric subject-object distinction. Moving

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